1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program installation support technique for installing a driver program for controlling office equipment from an external apparatus in the external apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when a driver program for controlling office equipment such as a printer from an external apparatus is installed in the external apparatus, a user needs to check a storage location of information necessary for installing a driver and an IP address for specifying the office equipment. This takes a lot of time for the user.
As a related technique, there is known a technique for receiving, in a cellular phone, a general-purpose printer driver from a printer side and installing the printer driver in the cellular phone, creating print data of an image about to be printed using the printer driver installed, and transmitting the print data to the printer from the cellular phone (see JP-A-2004-334785).
However, the conventional technique is entirely a technique for making it possible to control the printer and the like from a mobile device such as a cellular phone. It is impossible to apply the technique between apparatuses that are not easily brought close to each other like office equipment such as a printer and a desktop PC.
The invention has been devised to solve the problems described above and it is an object of the invention to provide a technique that can make, when a driver program for controlling office equipment from an external apparatus is installed in the external apparatus, work for the installation simple and easy regardless of a positional relation between the office equipment and the external apparatus.